


to a better summer

by plotdevice



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:22:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23526835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plotdevice/pseuds/plotdevice
Summary: "Thanks," Mark said. They sat in silence for a moment longer. Then Mark said: "This is all really nice." Johnny didn't say anything, just nodded. "Like, I think the entire idea was really good, but it's also, just, like. I don't know. It's kinda cool to do this stuff with you." He fought the urge to squirm as he said it.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 25
Kudos: 237





	to a better summer

**Author's Note:**

> there's a reference at the very beginning to johnny being hungry and thirsty during preparation for the album, which has to do w the behind the scenes video (i think?) where he says he didn't drink water for 2 days to make his abs look better. if u want to skip that, skip the paragraph that starts "johnny looked at him for a moment longer."
> 
> set directly after the vlive, you know the one.

Johnny ended the live and turned to look at Mark, who for a moment of stillness was aware of how close their faces were together. Something about the live triggered in him the same feeling of performance that he felt on stage--even in the intimacy of his home, in the quiet glow of the tent, the lens trained on him pulled out the same instinct of mechanical reaction. Now that it was off he felt stillness descend on him. Above them the fairy lights blinked. 

Johnny looked at him for a moment longer. He had not a predator's gaze but it was intense nonetheless. Lately it had been harder, and Mark felt himself reacting to it in ways he didn't fully understand. Johnny himself, for the past few months, had been pulled straight out of his head and into the base desires of his body. He was sometimes dizzy with hunger, sometimes parched for the water he denied himself. It was a sacrifice, Mark thought: that to achieve the pleasure of a bodily affect you had to endure bodily deprivation. But it made him uncomfortable all the same, to see the ways Johnny was made to endure, and so he tried not to think about it too much. 

"--going to make me another one?" Johnny said, cutting into his reverie. 

"Huh?" 

"I'm just kidding." Johnny waved it off. Then, taking his and Mark's mugs into his hands, he stood up, unfurling the long lines of his body. "I'm going to heat these up though."

"Dude, you don't have to, though--like, they were-- _really_ bad." 

"I think they just need to be heated up more," Johnny said. "I'm telling you, you gotta listen to me."

"I _do_ listen to you!" Mark said. He let Johnny walk over to the microwave without further protest. "I'm going to clean this stuff up." Their manager would probably reappear later to take the tent back to where it needed to go, but it was Johnny who'd bought the lights and therefore Johnny who was going to keep them.

"The tent?" 

"No, like, the--chips and stuff." Now that he looked, he could see how much Johnny had actually spilled. There were crumbs all over the floor, not just from when Johnny had overturned the tray but from the waffle snacks they'd been eating. "Ugh, actually, I might need the broom for this."

"Just leave it," Johnny said. His voice floated over the counter between them, but as he approached, carrying the mugs, it grew clearer. "Here, I reheated it. It tastes better now." The proportion of his limbs was such that watching him stand or sit felt, in some way, like being at a construction site.

"Thanks," Mark said. They sat in silence for a moment longer. Then Mark said: "This is all really nice." Johnny didn't say anything, just nodded. "Like, I think the entire idea was really good, but it's also, just, like. I don't know. It's kinda cool to do this stuff with you." He fought the urge to squirm as he said it.

"What do you mean?" Normally Johnny would have been all over him for a comment like that. He liked acting cheesy for the cameras and while it wasn't an act, it never felt like the real thing. He liked to ham it up too much for it to be the real thing. When they were younger Mark had simultaneously thought he was the coolest person in the world and the meanest; Johnny had always been the hardest on him in the practice room and the softest outside of it. And he never babied Mark off camera; he kept him on his toes. No one else treated him like that.

"Like, I just feel like, I dunno." He had a piece of the wrapper for the waffles in his hand and he played with it nervously now as he waited for the hot chocolate to cool down. "Like, I just like doing stuff with you. 'Cause you're my bro."

The look in Johnny's eyes made Mark want to slide right out of his skin, but in a good way. He couldn't place what it was, but in the pit of his stomach it settled itself, waiting to be fed and stoked. "Sure," Johnny said. He took a sip out of his mug, obscuring his face for a moment, and when it came down it was like that look had never happened again. But his voice was just as steady. "I get you. It's cool to do stuff like this with you too."

"And--and--and like, it's kind of like--" He knew something terrible was about to come out of his mouth, but he couldn't have stopped it if he tried. "And, like, the atmosphere is really nice, so it was just really cool. Like these lights are super romantic, you know?" Johnny raised an eyebrow and took another sip out of the mug. "Like--they're just like--it really is like if we were on a quarantine date together. Like if we were quarantined together, and we, like, still wanted to go on a date, but--"

"I get you," Johnny said. "Totally." He was smiling a little bit, but that same intensity had returned to his eyes. "But I think between the two of us, Mark, only one of us is dressed for a quarantine date. Kinda disappointing, don't you think?" He gestured between them, and Mark looked down at his outfit. 

"Oh... shit, dude, I didn't even realise that!" His voice squeaked up at the end of the sentence, and if it hadn't already been so hot in the tent between them, he was sure that his face would have been burning. "Yeah, but you look, like, really nice. Your hair looks real nice too, like you really dressed up." He dragged out the syllables in the _really_ to emphasise it. "I mean--not that you don't always look nice, but right now, like, you look _really_ nice." Thank god the hot chocolate had cooled down; he took a huge gulp to stop himself from talking anymore.

"It's fine," Johnny said. "You always look nice too." Johnny hadn't needed to really say it like that--he was just saying it to say it, because Mark would already have known from the look in his eyes. The way he was looking at Mark said everything his mouth was saying. "Really cute, honestly."

"Dude, no way. But like, yeah. It's just like--" He nodded uselessly. "Yeah. You know." 

The corners of Johnny's smile pressed down and flattened a bit, like he was trying not to laugh. "Sure." He took a bite out of a waffle. "What else would we do if we were on a date?" 

"Uh--like. I don't... know?" 

"If this were a quarantine date," Johnny pressed on. He was still smiling. "If we were on a quarantine date, and I got us Legos to put together, and you made a special hot chocolate drink for me that I had to reheat, and then you talked about Bird Box for ten minutes straight--"

"Dude!" Mark squeaked out. He could feel heat prickling across the back of his neck, spreading to his ears and making his face red. 

" _If_ all those things happened, what would happen next?" Mark noticed, suddenly, how close they were again. Johnny had moved closer while he was talking, and now Mark could see, without even really having to look, the shadows created by the dips of his collarbone, and the pronounced feline curve of his upper lip. The way his mouth moved when he talked. His long eyelashes framing his amber eyes. 

"Uh, I don't know?" 

"What usually happens on dates?" Johnny said. He put a hand close to Mark in a way that could have been to brace himself but put him right up in Mark's space. Here, he was so close that Mark could literally feel Johnny's breath on his skin, and it made him tense. Whatever had seated itself in the pit of his stomach earlier made itself known again; he wanted to crawl out of himself, he wanted to--

"Um. I really don't know," he said. His voice was very low. "You know I never--" 

"Yeah, that's true," Johnny said. There was a touch of regret in his voice, but Mark couldn't tell about what. He lifted his other hand, the one not balancing himself on the ground, and brushed Mark's bangs out of his eyes. The lights above made the highlights in his hair glow strange colours. "But I'm pretty sure you've seen movies and stuff, right? What happens at the end of dates, Mark?" 

Mark had no idea what he was supposed to be saying, and it wouldn't have mattered if he did anyway. Johnny was so close to him that he couldn't think; the thing in the pit of his stomach was stomping all over him, making him feel almost sick with anticipation, and Johnny was so close that if he got any closer--if he got any closer--

"A kiss!" Mark blurted out, and was cut off by Johnny taking his face in his hands and kissing him.

It took him a moment to register and then it was all sensation interrupted by his racing thoughts, all excitement tempered with anxiety. Johnny's lips were soft, and his hands were so gentle it was almost hard to believe that this was the same guy who could pick up Donghyuck and throw him over his shoulder to drag him out of the practice room. But anyway he didn't want to think about Donghyuck now--he wanted to think about Johnny's soft mouth, and Johnny's hands moving to his hair, and the way Johnny tilted his head and changed the angle of the kiss before--it ended, and Mark opened his eyes, that he didn't even know had been closed, and Johnny was out of his personal space, farther away than he had been during the entire live, looking embarrassed in a way that didn't fit his handsome face. 

"Anyway," Johnny said. He looked away and started clearing the food on the table, maybe looking for something to do. It was hard to tell--Mark had never seen him like this before. The tent, which just seconds ago had been charged with crackling energy, now felt banal, the warm, intimate brown now again a tepid sepia. "You can go back to yours. I'll--let manager-hyung know that I can clean this stuff up." Mark didn't say anything. "And I can take the fairy lights back to my room. And I think hyung will know how to take the tent apart, so--"

"Yeah," Mark said. It almost felt like someone else was saying it, that was how disconnected his brain was from his body. "Um. Yeah. That's like. Sounds. Totally cool, dude. That's." His legs picked him up on autopilot and carried him to his bed. The click of the door as it closed behind him registered only as a faint sound. Outside if he concentrated he could hear Johnny moving, clearing stuff away, but that wasn't what he wanted right now. The present only pushed him further away from that perfect moment to which, in his memory, when he thought hard enough, his body was transported back. Johnny's hand on his cheek. Johnny's mouth slanted against his. He buried his face in his pillow and let himself relive it. Then, when the sounds from outside had lessened, and he heard someone say goodbye, he took out his phone.

 _next time_ , he texted Johnny, _can i pick the quarantine date?_

The phone vibrated with a reply almost as soon as the message had sent. No words. Just a thumbs up emoji. 

Mark's body buzzed. He let himself breathe in the stillness. He smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> > In the darkest hours with the clouds overhead  
> Wind beating down and the tide coming in  
> We linger on the negative, forgetting how to get in  
> To a better summer where the sun ain't setting  
> No rain on my parade  
> Our love don't bring no shame
> 
> \--[Kenichiro Nishihara ft Amanda Diva, Beautiful Things](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm71m2wXcLo)


End file.
